At his first White House performance with other senior officials of the incoming Reagan administration, freshly appointed (but veteran covert action operative) intelligence chief William Casey told President Reagan and the others assembled:“We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.”
Hard to believe? Read below what an eye-witness has attested to:
“I am the source for this quote, which was indeed said by CIA Director William Casey at an early February 1981 meeting of the newly elected President Reagan with his new cabinet secretaries to report to him on what they had learned about their agencies in the first couple of weeks of the administration. The meeting was in the Roosevelt Room in the West Wing of the White House, not far from the Cabinet Room. I was present at the meeting as Assistant to the Chief Domestic Policy Adviser to the President.
Ray McGovernAs he did to all the other secretaries of their departments and agencies, Reagan asked Casey what he saw as his goal as director for the CIA, to which he replied with this quote, which I recorded in my notes of the meeting as he said it. Shortly thereafter I told Senior White House correspondent Sarah McClendon, who was a close friend and colleague, who in turn made it public.” Barbara HoneggerThere are hundreds of examples that could be adduced to show that the major corporate-owned media — whether by intimidation, misguided “patriotism,” or self-censorship — have made Casey’s dream come true....
For decades, freedom and democracy have been part of the U.S. brand. That doesn’t appear to hold true any longer, at least not in established democracies.Soft power dwindling away.
A study commissioned by a group founded by Anders Rasmussen, the former Danish prime minister and North Atlantic Treaty Organization secretary general,showed that in many Western nations, U.S. foreign policy and well as two mainstays of its global power – the finance and technology industries – are regarded as threats to democracy.
The group, the Alliance of Democracies Foundation, and Berlin-based Dalia Research, polled 177,870 people in 54 countries about their perceptions of democracy as a concept, its state in their home nations, and in the world in general.…
This is part one in an investigation into government-funded, opposition-linked NGOs that pose as impartial monitors and investigators of the Syrian conflict.More on propaganda, disinformation, and the information wars as tools in hybrid warfare.
At the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lang was the Defense Intelligence Officer (DIO) for the Middle East, South Asia and counter-terrorism, and later, the first Director of the Defense Humint Service. At the DIA, he was a member of the Defense Senior Executive Service. He participated in the drafting of National Intelligence Estimates. From 1992 to 1994, all the U.S. military attachés worldwide reported to him. During that period, he also briefed President George H. W. Bush at the White House, as he had during Operation Desert Storm.
He was also the head of intelligence analysis for the Middle East for seven or eight years at that institution. He was the head of all the Middle East and South Asia analysis in DIA for counter-terrorism for seven years. For his service in the DIA, Lang received the Presidential Rank Award of Distinguished Executive. — Wikipedia
A new book called Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons by Kris Newby adds significantly to our understanding of Lyme disease, while oddly seeming to avoid mention of what we already knew.
Newby claims (in 2019) that if a scientist named Willy Burgdorfer had not made a confession in 2013, the secret that Lyme disease came from a biological weapons program would have died with him. Yet, in 2004 Michael Christopher Carroll published a book called Lab 257: The Disturbing Story of the Government’s Secret Germ Laboratory. He appeared on several television shows to discuss the book, including on NBC’s Today Show, where the book was made a Today Show Book Club selection. Lab 257 hit the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list soon after its publication.
Newby’s book reaches the same conclusion as Carroll’s, namely that the most likely source of diseased ticks is Plum Island....Counterpunch
For nearly two decades, one of the most overlooked and little known arrests made in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks was that of the so-called “High Fivers,” or the “Dancing Israelis.” However, new information released by the FBI on May 7 has brought fresh scrutiny to the possibility that the “Dancing Israelis,” at least two of whom were known Mossad operatives, had prior knowledge of the attacks on the World Trade Center.
Shortly after 8:46 a.m. on the day of the attacks, just minutes after the first plane struck the World Trade Center, five men — later revealed to be Israeli nationals — had positioned themselves in the parking lot of the Doric Apartment Complex in Union City, New Jersey, where they were seen taking pictures and filming the attacks while also celebrating the destruction of the towers and “high fiving” each other. At least one eyewitness interviewed by the FBI had seen the Israelis’ van in the parking lot as early as 8:00 a.m. that day, more than 40 minutes prior to the attack. The story received coverage in U.S. mainstream media at the time but has since been largely forgotten.
The men — Sivan Kurzberg, Paul Kurzberg, Oded Ellner, Yaron Shimuel and Omar Marmari — were subsequently apprehended by law enforcement and claimed to be Israeli tourists on a “working holiday” in the United States where they were employed by a moving company, Urban Moving Systems. Upon his arrest, Sivan Kurzberg told the arresting officer, “We are Israeli; we are not your problem. Your problems are our problems, The Palestinians are the problem.”
For years, the official story has been that these individuals, while they had engaged in “immature” behavior by celebrating and being “visibly happy” in their documenting of the attacks, had no prior knowledge of the attack. However, newly released FBI copies of the photos taken by the five Israelis strongly suggest that these individuals had prior knowledge of the attacks on the World Trade Center. The copies of the photos were obtained via a FOIA request made by a private citizen....Mint Press News
Experts who track websites and social media linked to Russia have seen stirrings of a possible campaign of support for Hawaii Democrat Tulsi Gabbard.Here we go with the swiftboating or Tulsi. Are Americans this stupid?
Newsguard co-CEO Steven Brill in Brussels on Tuesday claimed that news sites that have recently criticized Newsguard’s motives — MintPress among them — are “secretly supported” by the Russian government, a claim for which he provided no evidence....MintPress News
...the mass media is not in the business of reporting facts, it’s in the business of selling narratives. Even if those narratives are so shrill and stress-inducing that they imperil the health of their audience....Fear-mongering is taking its toll. Caitlin Johnstone observes that the problem is not as much Trump as the media and its manufactured narratives. Good read.
What editorial control does the UK Guardian exercise on Op Ed pieces? Seemingly none if you read this article (December 24, 2018) – What Labour can learn about Brexit from California: think twice – written by some well-to-do American postgraduate working for DiEM25 in Athens. But when Thomas Fazi and I sought space to discuss our book – Reclaiming the State: A Progressive Vision of Sovereignty for a Post-Neoliberal World (Pluto Books, 2017) – or when I have sought space to provide some balance to the usual neoliberal, pro-Europe bias, the result has been no response (yay or nay). We never received a response to our solicitation. Even if we ignore the obvious imbalance in experience and qualifications (track record) of the respective ‘authors’, it seems that the UK Guardian only wants a particular view to be published even if the quality of that view would make the piece unpublishable in any respectable outlet. Go figure. Anyway, I now have read the worst article for 2018. And, I thought that the Remain debate had reached the depths of idiocy but there is obviously scope for more if this Guardian attempt at commentary is anything to go by. And I know the Guardian journalists read this blog – so why not allow Thomas and I to formally respond to all this Remain nonsense?...Maybe because the Guardian has become the voice of the UK neoliberal pseudo-left, much like the New York Times and the Washington Post are in the US? Can the deep state be far behind, too, providing anonymous sources off the record? Even the "news" is no longer actually news. What then of opinion pieces?
The problem with all of this obviously is that all these news outlets are supposed to report the news, and none of them do anymore. They ‘report’ the opinions of their editors and ‘journalists’, and if these people don’t like whoever it is the American people elect as their president, it’s open season.The boy who cried "wolf" comes to mind. When the public begins to suspect that they are being gaslighted by the corporate media the purpose of having a free press is undermined.
American media has made it acceptable for foreign media to write fake articles about the US president, which means ridicule of the Office of the President is fine too, and thereby the process by which he was elected. Re-read Kurbjuweit’s statement, that is what he says.
This is a sort of new normal that may well be the main legacy of 2018. It’s where the surge of social media and the internet in general have led us. In the process, they’ve swallowed the truth whole, and we may never see it again.
The truth is not a winning proposition. Fabricating stories and narratives and using them to string readers and viewers along like a modern version of the Pied Piper is a much bigger winner than the truth, and they’re all waking up to this new reality.
Der Spiegel’s response to being exposed as liars is to pretend to be open about it, but only by blaming one individual, while sparing the editors who let him roam free for 7 years.
The Guardian, which ran a fabricated story about meetings between Paul Manafort and Julian Assange in London’s Ecuadorian embassy a few weeks ago and was also exposed, has chosen a different approach: they attempt to smother the truth in silence. Both the writers of the story and editor-in-chief Kathy Viner, responsible for publishing blatant lies and fabrications are still on the payroll, there’s been no retraction and no apologies.
But there’s a flipside to this kind of thing. If you try to get away with murdering the truth the way Der Spiegel and the Guardian have done in these two instances, who’s going to read you next time around if they want to know what really happens, and take your words as true? No-one in their sound mind. So it’s necessarily a short term strategy....
Neoliberalism is a toxic economic dogma that has serious social and political consequences. In Britain and the US, mainstream media have a long record of selling neoliberalism to the public and political lawmakers. Recall Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s slogan, “There is no alternative” (TINA). As I document in my new book, Real Fake News (Red Pill Press), elites throughout history have always used information to control the thoughts and actions of the public. But the modern project has stretched itself to the limit, and people are starting to say No.…Fake news is perception management through narrative control, reality being a function of perception. When most of one's reality is not experienced directly, which Bertrand Russell called "knowledge by acquaintance." Rather, it is shaped by testimony, which Russell called "knowledge by description."
Take, for example, the mainstream’s fake news about the crash. Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University published a report on mainstream media coverage in the US and Europe. The authors found that one of the goals of big businesses, which rely on PR firms that often hand copy to journalists, is to perpetuate a “narrative of normality,” in which their greed is kept out of public view for as long as possible. As the authors put it, “no news is good news.” When a crisis does occur, the task is perception management.
“[S]tories originate from six main categories of sources,” the researchers found: from journalists, corporations, analysts, authorities and politicians and shareholders. Notice that unions, activists, alternative currency purveyors and dissident academics are not included. They can be found in the alternative online media and are thus at risk of being labelled “fake news” by the powerful. “When excluding the ‘default category’ of journalists, most of the information in news stories about the banking crisis comes from banks themselves.” Indeed, more than half came from financial institutions. “On average 52% of all information comes from banks, another 18% from analysts/experts.”…Renegade, Inc.
In 2001 David Cromwell and David Edwards founded the website MediaLens, which scrutinizes the work of the mainstream media coverage. The experience has led them to a stark conclusion - "the Western 'free press' operates as a propaganda system for state-corporate power".…
"Mainstream news outlets don't merely distort, hype or 'sex up' — they reverse the truth, render issues completely impossible to understand, and ignore the most important facts, arguments and voices. It's an awesomely effective form of thought control, all happening in the absence of any controlling conspiracy. The key to understanding this was supplied by Noam Chomsky — 'the basic principle, rarely violated, is what conflicts with the requirements of power and privilege does not exist'," they tell Sputnik.…
"The Times, Telegraph and Daily Mail set limits on the extent to which racism, warmongering and open class war are acceptable in the mainstream. So it's vital to ask why The Guardian isn't publishing Chomsky's most excoriating critiques of Western power, rather than why The Times isn't — for if his work doesn't appear in The Guardian, it doesn't appear anywhere, and if it's not appearing anywhere, then we don't have a 'free press', which is a problem. The limits on free speech liberal media has imposed have had disastrous consequences for our own society and societies such Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen," they say.…
To say the least, MediaLens' work has won the Davids few not a single friend in the corporate media — after all, their work places journalists "in an impossible situation".
For instance, Owen Jones and George Mobiot, The Guardian's best-known progressive commentators, have frequently clashed with the pair via email and social media. While revered by many readers as "dissidents" providing "no-holds barred commentary" on key issues, MediaLens has identified many major, crucial shortcomings in their analysis, which mean they fit easily into the mainstream propaganda matrix as any other journalist.
Moreover, the remaining filter — of elite ownership — still applies to The Guardian to a sizeable degree. Historically, the paper was owned by non-profit entity the Scott Trust, but it was wound up in 2008 and replaced by a limited company — its board is comprised of individuals with links to banking, insurance, advertising, consumer goods, telecommunications, information technology, venture investment, marketing services and other sectors of the establishment. As a result, the paper almost inescapably ends up serving power — but neither Jones nor Monbiot can discuss that openly....Another reason to add to the list of why the Western elites hate Sputnik.
The Rand Corporation defines America's influence operations as... “the coordinated, integrated, and synchronized application of national diplomatic, informational, military, economic, and other capabilities in peacetime, crisis, conflict, and post-conflict to foster attitudes, behaviors, or decisions by foreign target audiences that further US interests and objectives. In this view, influence operations accent communications to affect attitudes and behaviors but also can include the employment of military capabilities, economic development, and other real-world capabilities that also can play a role in reinforcing these communications.”…
The fact is that spreading disinformation and confusion are what governments and intelligence services do to protect what they consider to be vital interests. It is naïve for the US Senate and America’s leading newspapers to maintain that intelligence probing and other forms of interference from Russia or China or Iran or even “friend” Israel occur in a vacuum. Everyone intrudes and spreads lies and everyone will continue to do it because it is easy to understand and cheap to run. In the end, however, its effectiveness is limited. In 2016 the election result was determined by a lack of trust on the part of the American people for what the establishment politicians have been offering, not because of interference from Moscow.
The Grayzone entered the carefully concealed offices of a covert, British government-backed propaganda mill that is at the center of an international scandal the mainstream media refuses to touch.
The entire extremely shady enterprise, as Miller explained, is an elaborate front for the British military-intelligence apparatus. Its covert coordination with friendly politicians and mainstream journalists recalls the Cold War-era intrigue known as Operation Mockingbird.
That scandal involved the unmasking of “more than 400 American journalists who…in the past twenty-five years have secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency,” as Carl Bernstein revealed in a 1977 Rolling Stone report.
The exposing of the Integrity Initiative has just scratched the surface of what appears to be a much more sophisticated, insidious, and extremely online version of Operation Mockingbird. With new internal documents appearing each week through a hacker’s organization called Anonymous Europe, the revelations are yielding one of the most potentially explosive national security scandals in recent times.
But even as members of Britain’s parliament thunder with demands for official accountability, the UK and US mainstream media still strangely refuses to touch the story....Best reporting yet on this unfolding scandal, at least of which I am aware. This story has legs and the establishment is going to try to bury or kill it. It draws back the curtain.
The British government financed Integrity Initiative is tasked with spreading anti-Russian propaganda and with influencing the public, military and governments of a number of countries. What follows is an incomplete analysis of the third batch of the Initiative's papers which was dumped yesterday.More evidence.
